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Report this boo Bulimba, QLD, Australia Listen! via audioboo.fm My Podcast at AudioBoo where I discuss Posterous.com and its many applications. Posted via web from Ronpass posterous

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AudioBoo / Posterous.com

This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs weekly. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. – Ed.

From Google Squared enhancements to search becoming more social, this week brought a slew of exciting and (we hope) useful search feature releases:

Social Search
Sometimes, there might be relevant content on the web from people in your social circle. For example, learning what your friend thinks about the latest gadget or exotic travel location (e.g. in his or her blog) can help enhance your search experience. Until recently, there was no easy way to find this type of content published by your friends. Last October, we launched Social Search in Google labs to help solve this problem.

After a large number of users opted in and tried out the feature, Social Search has graduated and is available in beta for all signed-in users on google.com in English. We also added this feature to Google Images and gave you a way to visualize your social circle. To learn more about Social Search and how to get better social search results check out this post or this video.

Google Squared single item landing page
Last year we launched Google Squared, an experimental search tool that collects facts from the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet. For categorical searches like [us presidents] or [dog breeds], Google Squared produces the type of extracted facts you might be interested in, and presents them in a meaningful way. Starting this week, Google Squared has a new design to better handle queries looking for a single thing, like a specific president or a particular breed of dog. The page is now easier to read and includes multiple images, and you can still add, remove or change the type of facts that are visible.

Example searches: [barack obama] and [boston terrier]

Better labels for Time/LIFE images
In late 2008, we worked with Time/LIFE to digitize several million archival images never been seen before, and made them available in Image Search. At that time, many images in the collection had descriptions and labels and were easy to search for. But some had less descriptive information, making them more difficult to find. Now it’s possible for knowledgeable users to label images and enrich the collection. Over time, we hope the Google community will make the quality of image search better than ever before.

Example: [Cincinnati baseball]. Note the “labels” in the bottom righthand corner.

We hope you enjoy the variety of new features this week.

Posted by Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management, Search

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This week in search 1/31/10

Having lost the 1/2 billion dollar bid to acquire Yelp, it was obvious Google was moving aggressively to win the local war. It’s no surprise then that the search giant announced location will now be a critical factor for the search results that come up, especially if you are using Google’s mobile search support for which was launched in September.

For example, if you search for a “Chinese restaurant” and you are standing in Tulsa, the first result you get is going to be the restaurant closest to you. It won’t matter how maxed out with metadata the Chinese restaurant in Oklahoma, Des Moines or New York City is, it won’t overcome the geographic data of the local diner next door. In Google’s thinking, when people Google for a restaurant, a plumber or a veterinarian, they are looking for someone near them to call for services.

Google has also beefed up its Local Business Center, which allows businesses to provide specific information to appear on the Google Maps feature. Google looks to have all intentions of turning its map into the world’s most comprehensive business directory, answering not only where a business is and what it does, but also taking care of the tip-of-the-tongue issue.

“What’s that place across from Grandma’s house that sells lawn furniture?” There’s an map for that now.

Question is will there be enough mainstream adoption of local search? This is what points to Google’s bet on local to be spot on. As smartphones reach critical mass, more people outside of the die-hard technology crowd will make this their default search tool for things near them if they see it as viable alternate for directory assistance. To back its bet Google will use Android to push not only its offline strategy but its online strategy; this should become top of mind to marketers as Google seeks to win the war over local.

What the Google Local push speaks to is the growing granular nature of information on the Web and how it’s now just as valuable (if not more so) to know who are your businesses neighbors as it is to hit No. 1 in SERPs.

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Google Knows Where You Are and has the Goods to Show for it.

The internet is aplenty with resources. It is no wonder that it is hard to stay focus enough to actually begin your own business via internet marketing. What you need to find is an online business model that will work for you.

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Internet Marketing The Easy Way – Affiliate Marketing Posted By : Lance Thorington

It being my first time at the Affiliate Summit and it being my first time at the conference, it might sound naive to say it was the best conference yet… but it was. I enjoyed the enthusiasm and the energy of the conference participants, the contacts made through various networking events, the shared knowledge and experience from all types of industry and the atmosphere provided by Las Vegas itself. I barely slept, but I barely noticed! (Until I got home.)

Only some of our highlights were caught on camera – apparently I like talking more than I like taking photographs? Here, for your enjoyment is a brief recap of our time in Vegas…

In online marketing, one of the best benefits of attending conferences is putting a face to the names you are in contact with on a daily basis.

Julia is modeling some of the must-have tools when standing at a booth at the conference- well done Julia!

I purchased these Blundstone boots just before the Summit and am ever pleased as punch that I did. After tottering around in heels at parties in the evening time, my feet needed the welcome relief of some stylish comfort boots. Or is it shoe-boots? Or sh-oots?

Getting to see some of the sites of Vegas on our way to sponsored events was a real treat – nothing can prepare you for this… and it gves some great decorative ideas for your home renovation plans. Next up for reno plans: the Giant Manta Ray Aquarium.

We attended several parties and we enjoyed all of them =) It’s pretty amazing to see something like this when I’m someone who is just shy of six feet tall and feels proud on those days that I can almost touch my toes.

I think this was supposed to be an imitation of that Charlie’s Angels silhouette.

So. I admit. I always chose pubs and dives over clubs. This is what happens when you’re an ill-advised 20-something.

Thanks again to OPMPros.com for organizing such great parties.

I’m leaving this re-cap with this photo, because I enjoy it.  It is only when you enter a glass elevator do you discover who likes and who dislikes heights.

If you have your own photos to share of ASW10 – post your link in the comments! We’d love to see them.

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ASW10: Photo Recap!

We wanted to let you know about the latest Share Results Hot Coupon Deals for February 2010.

This month, we have several merchant promotions available in honor of the holiday. The Imaginary Greetings offer, Letters from Cupid will fit really well with any affiliate sites that have a Valentine’s Day theme. Additionally, we’re introducting two new CPL offers from The CuteKid.com as well as Planning Family, both of which are ideal for those of you who specialize in lead gen campaigns.

Letters from Cupid

Customer Promo: Get 4 FREE Cupid Coupons with the Purchase of a Letter from Cupid + Buy 3 Letters from Cupid and get the 4th one FREE

Offer expires February 28, 2010

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AdditionElle/Penningtons/MXM

Coupon code: Get 10% OFF Orders (No Minimum)

Free Returns for all order in Canada + CANADA/US Shipping is now a flat-rate $7.50!

Offers expires February 28, 2010

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GOBIO!

Coupon code: Get $5.00 OFF Purchases in February + More Monthly E-Specials

Offer expires February 28, 2010

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SWAP@HOME

Customer Promo: $5 BONUS for every Member in Addition to any Deposit of $15 or more in their account

Offer expires February 28, 2010

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UGHH

Coupon code: FREE Standard Shipping on orders over $50 (US only)

Get $20 Off orders $100 or More

Spend $50 + Pick 3 items from FREE Stuff Section

Offer expires February 28, 2010 and cannot be applied to previous purchase or combined with any other coupons

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Barcelo Hotels & Resorts

Customer Promos: Get 25% Off all -inclusive Barcelo Resorts in Mexico (No Coupon Require)

Offer expires April 30, 2010

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Planning Family

New Offer: Brand new Free Stuff For Your Baby Offer – $2 CPL

Offer is ongoing

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The CuteKid

New offer: 2010 CuteKid Contest + New Banners and $1.25 CPL Per member Registration

Offer is Ongoing

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With  great Valentine’s Day promos and  coupons being offered this month, we hope you take advantage of them over the next few weeks. The best way to do this is to log into your affiliate account and join the programs that interest you under the Share Results MERCHANTS menu.

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Purveyors of malware and BlackHat SEO’s have been pulling in a great deal of headlines lately. It seems anytime something makes the news, there is a report of illegitimate web sites targeting keywords associated with the story to draw visitors into their malicious site. Earlier this month, I discussed how search poisoning is used to push malicious sites to the top of the SERPs. I figured a nice follow up to this would be a description of what the attacker does once he or she gets you to their site.

Drive-by downloads
The purpose of the search poisoning is usually to drive unsuspecting visitors to a malicious web site where the visitor’s computer downloads malware to their computer without their consent or knowledge.

A drive-by download , or drive-by installation, works by exploiting security vulnerabilities on the browser used to surf the Internet. A malicious web site is set up containing code that actively seeks out these vulnerabilities. When found, they send the visitor to a third-party server where the malware is silently installed on their computer.

Why the third-party server? Even attackers work hard to achieve these high page rankings, albeit through less than ethical techniques. Sending visitors to a third-party server means their ranked page can survive longer since it is not flagged as housing malware.

Examples
In the month of January, four headlines drew a large amount of interest from attackers. The rumors of actor Johnny Depp’s death, actress Brittany Murphy’s death, the earthquake in Haiti and the release of the Apple iPad all found themselves to be targets of a combined SEO poisoning/drive-by download attack.

In each case, the victim downloaded malware to their computer known as “scareware”. Scareware is used to frighten the victim into believing that their computer is infected with malware. In a panic, the victim purchases the advertised security software to clean their system. Selling bogus security software to their victims has been bringing attackers in around 15 million dollars a month. Not hard to believe when you consider that Consumer Reports estimates that 1 in 90 people fall for these scams.

While scareware is the malware du jour, it is not the only method of attack. Some sites install even less conspicuous malware onto their victims’ computers. Using Trojans, attackers can steal passwords, account information or create large botnets of zombie computers that they use to attack web sites, attack networks and spread spam. A prime example of this was when the Stadium for the Miami Dolphin’s web site was injected with a malicious code attacking those looking for Super Bowl information.

More to come
Just next month, the Winter Olympic games kick off and this summer, the World Cup will be in full swing. Security experts are already predicting these to be included in the next round of malicious keywords.

Protecting yourself from drive-by downloads can be tricky. It would be easy to suggest that people only visit well-known web sites, but that is counter-productive to the web. After all, what makes the web so great is the ability to find new and interesting sites.

Tools can be used to help identify sites that could be potentially dangerous. McAfee has introduced SiteAdvisor and Symantec has Norton Safe Web, but unless someone else has been infected by the site it does little to protect you.

The best solution to any malware is to run a legitimate anti-malware , or anti-virus for those stuck in the 1990’s, software on your computer that is updated frequently. Staying proactive is the only way to keep infectious files at bay.

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Drive-by Downloads on the Rise

Today, we’re beginning a troubleshooting series to help you diagnose and solve common issues with your ads, search boxes, and account functionality. We’re kicking things off with a look at how to correctly implement your ad code and an explanation of why ads may not appear on your pages at times.

First, the best way to ensure ads are served correctly is to copy and paste the code exactly as it’s provided in your account. Changing the code and manipulating ad behavior aren’t permitted by our program policies, and in most cases will prevent your ad from appearing at all.

If you’ve noticed that your ad units aren’t showing ads, here are a few things to check for:

• Did you just add the code to that page? Relevant ads should appear on your pages shortly after you add the code, but sometimes it can take up to 48 hours for ads to show. This is because our crawler has to visit your page and determine its content so we can serve targeted ads.

• Does the code on your page match the code in your account? Make sure to copy the code exactly as it appears in your account, and paste it within the body tags of your HTML code. Be sure not to make any changes to the linebreaks of the code (e.g. pasting the code all in one line) as this will break the code and prevent ads from showing entirely.
• Are you using an HTML editor? Publishers often use a design-enhanced HTML editor like Macromedia Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage (aka WYSIWIG, “what you see is what you get” software). If you use such an editor, you may see errors if you paste your ad code into a WYSIWYG view such as the “Design” or “Layout” view. For the ads to function properly, you’ll have to copy and paste the ad code into the HTML source code of your webpage using the editor’s HTML view or HTML insert function. Check for any additional tags inserted by the system or changes in the linebreaks.
• Are you using a content management system (CMS)? If you have trouble implementing AdSense with a specific content management system, we recommend searching for the name of the CMS (eg. Drupal, WordPress) and ‘AdSense implementation’. You can also ask in the forum if other publishers have mastered similar problems, or contact your program provider directly.
• Are the ads inside nested frames? While you can choose where to position your ads on your pages, be sure to avoid embedding the ad code in excessive div tags or nested frames. Depending on your browser settings, implementing your ad code in this way might prevent ads from appearing correctly.
• Is JavaScript enabled in your browser? Ensure that you have JavaScript enabled in your browser, as this is necessary to view ads! If you’re having trouble seeing the ads, please also check for any conflicting JavaScript on your site that might prevent ads from showing.
• Is your page dynamically generated? If you’d like to implement AdSense ads on a dynamically generated site — for example, a site with session IDs or pages behind a login — you should take a look at this Help Center entry for more information on how to receive targeted ads.

In the next part of this series, we’ll provide tips to help you troubleshoot ad relevancy and targeting issues.

Posted by Ulrike Jung – Inside AdSense Team

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Troubleshooting tips part I: Implementing your ad code

About 18 months ago, we published a graph showing that Unicode on the web had just exceeded all other encodings of text on the web. The growth since then has been even more dramatic.

Web pages can use a variety of different character encodings, like ASCII, Latin-1, or Windows 1252 or Unicode. Most encodings can only represent a few languages, but Unicode can represent thousands: from Arabic to Chinese to Zulu. We have long used Unicode as the internal format for all the text we search: any other encoding is first converted to Unicode for processing.

This graph is from Google internal data, based on our indexing of web pages, and thus may vary somewhat from what other search engines find. However, the trends are pretty clear, and the continued rise in use of Unicode makes it even easier to do the processing for the many languages that we cover.

Searching for “nancials”?
Unicode is growing both in usage and in character coverage. We recently upgraded to the latest version of Unicode, version 5.2 (via ICU and CLDR). This adds over 6,600 new characters: some of mostly academic interest, such as Egyptian Hieroglyphs, but many others for living languages.

We’re constantly improving our handling of existing characters. For example, the characters “fi” can either be represented as two characters (“f” and “i”), or a special display form “fi”. A Google search for [financials] or [office] used to not see these as equivalent — to the software they would just look like *nancials and of*ce. There are thousands of characters like this, and they occur in surprisingly many pages on the web, especially generated PDF documents.

But no longer — after extensive testing, we just recently turned on support for these and thousands of other characters; your searches will now also find these documents. Further steps in our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

And we’re angling for a party when Unicode hits 50%!

Posted by Mark Davis, Senior International Software Architect

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Unicode nearing 50% of the web

Recently The Virginia Senate has proposed Bill no. 660. Effectively, the same Advertising Tax that was passed and done significant damage to the small entrepreneurial internet marketing businesses in those states and cost small business jobs in the process.

States have started looking at these bills as a way to make money for their states in times of economic and budgetary turmoil. In California, arguably the State with the most financial troubles, Governor Schwarzenegger understood the effect that this bill would have on the entrepreneurs and jobs in his state and vetoed the bill.

Last night Governor Bob McDonnell delivered the GOP response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address. The full video of his response is below, but I wanted to call attention to some of his words in that response that clearly shows that he must follow Governor Schwarzenegger’s example and veto Bill 660, if it make it to his desk. He said the following:

“Here in Virginia we face our highest unemployment rate in 25 years, and bringing new jobs and more opportunities to our citizens is the top priority of my administration. Good Government policies should spur economic growth and strengthen the private sectors ability to create new jobs.”

And then Governor McDonnell followed that with the following at 1:49 in the video below and aired throughout most of the morning news broadcasts this morning:

“We must enact policies that promote entrepreneurship and innovation so America can better compete with the world. What government should not do is pile on more taxation, regulation, and litigation that kills jobs and hurt the middle class.”

Virginia Senate Bill 660 is a policy that will discourage entrepreneurship in Virginia. If enacted, the innovative entrepreneurs in the state will be dropped by the same merchants that the state hopes to obtain taxes from and the potential tax gains will be more than offset by the loss of revenue from these entrepreneural businesses and the employees they are forced to fire.

There are many Internet marketing and advertising companies in Virgina that earn their living through Internet advertising. They do not sell merchant products, nor do they even know who their customers are. These businesses earn revenue through advertising for out-of-state merchants. Upwards of 90% or more of their revenue comes from out-of-state merchants. Large advertisers like Overstock and Amazon have already put Virginia affiliates on notice, that if this bill progresses they will stop working with these entrepreneurial companies in Virginia, like they have in EVERY state that this Internet Advertising tax has been proposed. Those large advertisers are just the tip of the iceberg, many merchants will stop working with these entrepreneurial companies in Virginia, because we have seen it happen in New York and every other state where this Advertising Tax has been passed.

Please Governor McDonnell, we hope that you will help us insure that this bill never reaches your desk, but if it does, please Veto it. Don’t allow Virginia to enact a policy that squashes entrepreneurship and innovation in your state by piling on more taxation that will kill jobs and hurt the middle class of Virginia.

Respectfully yours,

Adam Viener
Chariman & Founder
Imwave, Inc.
Reston, VA

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Despite Overstock’s maneuvering and the local efforts of Colorado affiliates organized by Brian Fox, Senior Director of Business Development at  Adperio, the Colorado House Finance Committee has passed HB 1193 (pdf). The motion passed with a 6-5 vote and with only a slight amendment, mostly in reference to appropriation.

The bill was introduced on January 22nd, 2010, by Colorado State Representative John “Jack” Pommer, who is also Chair of the Appropriations Committee, and Senator Rollie Heath. If fully ratified the bill is expected to commence on March 1, 2010.

To find out more about HB 1193 visit either the Performance Marketing Association here, or Affiliate Advocacy here. Both are great resources. There is still time to impact the outcome of this legislation.

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Breaking News: Colorado Finance Committee Passes HB 1193

Thursday, January 28th marks International Data Privacy Day. We’re recognizing this day by publicly publishing our guiding Privacy Principles.

• Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services.
• Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices.
• Make the collection of personal information transparent.
• Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy.
• Be a responsible steward of the information we hold.

We’ve always operated with these principles in mind. Now, we’re just putting them in writing so you have a better understanding of how we think about these issues from a product perspective. Like our design and software guidelines, these privacy principles are designed to guide the decisions we make when we create new technologies. They are one of the key reasons our engineers have worked on new privacy-enhancing initiatives and features like the Google Dashboard, the Ads Preferences Manager and the Data Liberation Front. And there is more in store for 2010.

You can find out more about our efforts at the Google Privacy Center and on our YouTube channel.

Posted by Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President, Engineering & Research

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Google’s Privacy Principles

Over time, we’ve dedicated time, people, and financial resources to organizations, events and schools to help advance this mission — and we’re excited to share that we rounded out 2009 with a donation of $8 million to a variety of organizations who share our dedication to this cause. Our efforts were focused in four key areas:

Starting in high school
STEM education at an elementary and high school level builds technical skills early and encourages interest in technology. To support the ongoing education of these subjects, we identified more than 600 high schools with significant populations of students from under-represented and economically disadvantaged backgrounds and are providing laptops to their computer science and math departments. We are also offering laptops to some of the most promising students in these schools. In a time when many of these schools are experiencing decreased funding, we wanted to support their continued commitment to learning and teaching these subjects, and recognize the exceptional work done by teachers in these communities. If you’re interested in learning more about our efforts in this field, check out Google Code University (CS tutorials for students and teachers) as well as our tools, tips and lesson plans for K-12 educators.

Growing promising talent
We’ve worked with over 200 outstanding students as part of our FUSE, CSSI, BOLD and BOLD Practicum summer programs. To help the alumni of our 2009 summer programs pursue their studies, we awarded former program participants with school-based scholarships. We hope that this support for tuition will lessen the financial burden on these students and their families, reduce work-study commitments and free them up to explore other educational opportunities, like studying abroad.

Advancing technical knowledge through universities
We have close relationships with universities around the world — not only do we employ their alumni, but they are also a source of groundbreaking research and innovation. We awarded grants ranging in size from $20k to $100k to 50 U.S.-based universities with whom we already have relationships and directed these funds toward departments that are closely aligned with promoting under-represented minorities in technology. We hope to expand this effort both to more U.S.-based universities and to universities around the world in the future.

Partnerships with the organizations that make it happen
Our commitment to promote women and under-represented minorities in technology is shared by dozens of local and national organizations around the country. We awarded grants to 22 partner organizations, almost all of which we have worked with in the past. These organizations are on the front lines, making sure that under-represented groups have the support, resources and contacts they need. You’ll find a list of these organizations with a quick overview of the work they focus on here.

This was a terrific way to close out 2009 and we look forward to attracting and encouraging more students from traditionally under-represented backgrounds to pursue studies and careers in science, technology, engineering and math. In the meantime, you can find news especially for students on the Students Blog and by following us on @googlestudents.

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Supporting students from under-represented backgrounds in the pursuit of a technical education

Late last year we released the Social Search experiment to make search more personal with relevant web content from your friends and online contacts. We were excited by the number of people who chose to try it out, and today Social Search is available to everyone in beta on google.com.

We’ve been having a lot of fun with Social Search. It’s baby season here on our team — two of us just had little ones, and a third is on the way. We’re all getting ready to be parents for the first time and we have lots of questions. So, what do we do? We search Google, of course! With Social Search, when we search for [baby sleep patterns], [swaddling] or [best cribs], not only do we get the usual websites with expert opinions, we also find relevant pages from our friends and contacts. For example, if one of my friends has written a blog where he talks about a great baby shop he found in Mountain View, this might appear in my social results. I could probably find other reviews, but my friend’s blog is more relevant because I know and trust the author.

While we’ve been enjoying Social Search (and having babies), we’ve been hard at work on new features. For example, we’ve added social to Google Images. Now when you’re doing a search on Images, you may start seeing pictures from people in your social circle. These are pictures that your friends and other contacts have published publicly to the web on photo-sharing sites like Picasa Web Albums and Flickr. Just like the other social results, social image results appear under a special heading called “Results from your social circle.” Here’s what it looks like:

The new features are rolling out now on google.com in English for all signed-in users, and you should start seeing them in the next few days. Time to socialize!

Posted by Maureen Heymans, Technical Lead for Social Search, and Terran Melconian, Technical Lead for Social Image Search

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Search is getting more social

One of the benefits of having a strong parent company is the ability to reap the opportunities being tied to such an organization can provide. As a parent company, Rakuten is certainly no slouch, boasting Japan’s largest internet shopping mall, the Rakuten Ichiba, with over 60 million registered users and $2.7 billion in US dollars in sales in 2008.

Like its distant second competitor Google, Baidu has been searching for ways to expand its profitability. Thus the appeal of tapping Rakuten’s infrastructure to create a ready-made proven ecommerce model custom built for China.

As Kentaro Hyakuno, Senior Executive Officer of Rakuten, put it, “Baidu, with its vast reach and deep user loyalty, is the perfect complement to Rakuten’s extensive experience in the online B2C sector.”

The mall, which at an estimated cost of at least the equivalent of $50 million in US dollars will be the largest of its kind in China, is scheduled to launch in the latter half of 2010 with Rakuten owning 51% and Baidu owning 49% of the venture.

The timing of this news coincides with LinkShare Symposium West which starts tomorrow, January 28 in San Francisco. With the launch of the Google Affiliate Network, LinkShare’s market space has been slipping. Being able to leverage its strong affiliate relationships in Q4 of 2010 to help back the launch of such a mall is definitely just what the doctor ordered. Conversely this has the potential of making LinkShare more appealing to US advertisers who are eager to find inroads to a Chinese audience.

According to Mark Kirschner, Chief Marketing Officer for LinkShare, the opportunity is real as “LinkShare is the affiliate marketing platform of choice for Rakuten, so everywhere they go, we go with them.”

It will be interesting to see what announcements LinkShare has in store for the industry at Symposium.

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LinkShare May Be Affiliate Network of Choice in China as Baidu forms Joint Venture with Rakuten